Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business.
Glad to see you, sir,′ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘You’ll find us rough, sir, but you’ll find us ready.
However, as Mrs. Chillip says, sir, they undergo a continual punishment; for they are turned inward, to feed upon their own hearts, and their own hearts are very bad feeding.
Let us have no meandering.
In the front first floor, a clerk who looked something between a publican and a rat-catcher – a large pale, puffed, swollen man – was attentively engaged with three or four people of shabby appearance, whom he treated as unceremoniously as everybody seemed to be treated who contributed to Mr. Jaggers’s coffers.
That at this sight Mrs. Markleham dropped the newspaper, and stared more like a figure-head intended for a ship to be called The Astonishment, than anything else I can think of.
Early in the morning, I sauntered through the dear old tranquil streets, and again mingled with the shadows of the venerable gateways and churches. The rooks were sailing about the cathedral towers; and the towers themselves, overlooking many a long unaltered mile of the rich country and its pleasant streams, were cutting the bright morning air, as if there were no such thing as change on earth.
Do not allow a trivial misunderstanding to wither the blossoms of spring, which, once put forth and blighted, cannot be renewed.
It shows that you don’t expect, as many elderly people do expect, old heads on young shoulders.
The more he thought, the more perplexed he was; and, the more he endeavoured not to think, the more he thought.
I have tried to resign myself, and to console myself; and that, I hope, I may have done imperfectly; but what I cannot firmly settle in my mind is, that the end will absolutely come. I hold her hand in mine, I hold her heart in mine, I see her love for me, alive in all its strength. I cannot shut out a pale lingering shadow of belief that she will be spared.
When I find what you are, and what uncle is, I think what God must be, and can cry to him.
Death is Nature’s remedy for all things, and why not Legislation’s?
It has always been in my observation of human nature, that a man who has any good reason to believe in himself never flourishes himself before the faces of other people in order that they may believe in him. For this reason, I retained my modesty in very self.
The first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart.
To the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil.
I really feel almost ashamed of having known that he was not quite in his wits, taking account of the utmost I have done with mine.
It would be no pleasure to a London tradesman to sell anything which was what he pretended it was.
She did not replace my mother; no one could do that;.
I am generally short and sweet – or short and sour, according as it may be and as opinions vary –.
I could not do what I have promised, for money,” she replied. “I could not take it, if I was starving. To give me money would be to take away your trust, to take away the object that you have given me, to take away the only certain thing that saves me from the river.